


False Awakening

by The_Exile



Category: NiGHTS into Dreams
Genre: Creepy, F/M, Minor Spoilers, Post-Game(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-04
Updated: 2017-05-04
Packaged: 2018-10-28 00:12:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10819668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Exile/pseuds/The_Exile
Summary: Elliot was good at staying asleep when it was important not to wake up.





	False Awakening

Elliot let out a yelp as he suddenly found himself hanging mid-air. Despite his practiced sportsman's grace, his limbs flailed in uncoordinated windmills as he fell to the floor with a thud that would have left a large bruise on his rump if it hadn't been a dream. Nothing really prepared you from sudden lurching falls, even having experienced them ten times already so far. It was all he could do not to let the unexpected shock wake up...

Like the scent of fear attracts dogs to their prey, the thought of emerging from his slumber immediately summoned several familiar loud ringing noises and the low whines of motors. The sound grew louder and he could tell by now how far away they were, from which direction they were coming from. All directions, and very close. He was already surrounded. They had been waiting for him. They were learning which parts of the course he had the most trouble with, where he was most likely to fail and run out of time. 

When he was most tempted to leave it until the last second like the stupid show-off he was. You're going to get yourself killed one day, he chided himself. You're exactly the same in the waking world, always bouncing the ball too close to the road instead of waiting until you get into the park, but you just have to show off your moves whenever you see a girl, don't you?

No, don't think about the waking world... The ringing sped up as the sensation of dream-doubt, the ripples in the fabric of a tenuous reality, grew more pronounced. He tried to banish such thoughts from his mind and concentrate on running.

He needed to get to higher ground. Pulling himself up onto a tree branch was surprisingly hard, seeing as he climbed trees all the time in the waking world (No! Bad attention span!). It was the shock of disconnecting from NiGHTs, he realised. When he was one was the purple jester, he was the most majestic, graceful creature in existence, an acrobat who could literally fly through the air. No wonder he showed off so much when he was in the body of such a magnificent entity! But now he was just a gangly, awkward adolescent again. He was also alone and hunted.

An Alarm Egg hovered just underneath him, so close that the branch he clung to brushed against its metal shell. Its constant clamour vibrated through the tree, making him feel nauseous, but the mechanical sentinel didn't seem to notice. Its searchlight could swivel up - he had seen it happen - but they rarely bothered. Their ringing felt as though it was tearing through the fabric of reality itself even as it shredded his nerves but he managed to avoid coming close enough to the brink of waking up to alert their presence. It was NiGHTs who saved him, the jester's soft presence like a lullaby inside his mind, still constant, if distant, despite his forced disconnection from NiGHTs. 

He had to get back to NiGHTs. He had no idea where he was in relation to the Ideya temple. If he was going to reach a decent vantage point in this dense jungle, he would need to climb to the top of the tree he was hiding in. There wasn't much he could do if his pursuers decided to search above them more thoroughly except keep closer to the underside of the giant leaves. They would find him eventually if he stayed apart from NiGHTs for too long. Not oly was he slow and weak and clumsy in comparison to them, he was simply too incongruous, a dreamer with so much Ideya, who was so aware of Nightopia's true nature.

Who had been here for so damn long...

Keeping time was near impossible in Nightopia, where the passage of time was about as logical as it was in any other dream. All he could do was literally mark off the seconds. He hadn't been able to do so consistently - it threatened to wake him up every time he tried to force the logic of the waking world into the dream - but he had enough marks noted down to know that it had been a lot longer than humans were supposed to dream for. 

It probably wasn't good for him to sleep this long. He'd probably wake up with awful cramp and feeling as though he hadn't got any sleep at all - or worse, his mother would panic and think he had contracted some awful disease that had sent him into a coma. No, that kind of thinking was exactly the sort of thing that could wake him up if he didn't catch himself in time.

He couldn't wake up. If he woke up, he would never find this place again. He didn't have all his Ideya back yet and your Ideya was sort of like a part of your soul, and besides, if he didn't take it back, Wizeman would have it and the Lord of Nightmare would use it to power his invasion of the waking world. Besides, NiGHTs wouldn't have anyone else to dualise with in order to exist outside their prison because there wasn't anyone else like Elliot, that was the whole reason why he was able to keep himself asleep in the first place. He was glad it didn't seem to be causing him any immediate problems, even though that in itself was weird.

* * *

Elliot finally woke up.

It was a surprisingly refreshing sleep, although he felt so comfortable he didn't want to move from the covers he was still wrapped tightly in, apparently having not stirred despite his hectic dreams. It must have been a last gift from NiGHTs, he decided, to give him an undisturbed rest for the remainder of his sleep. His alarm had woken him up, a normal alarm clock this time, faintly annoying but probably not capable of devouring his soul. He still reflexively knocked it off the table but he did that most mornings anyway.

Bright morning sun poured through his curtains when he opened them. He blinked, yawned, stretched his arms wide above his head and...

Shook his head again. Another false alarm, another false awakening. That made five in a row. They weren't even trying to be subtle about it any more. The numbers on the clock face were blurred gibberish, the view from the mirror an idealised pastel portrait of his home town, across which a Nightopian was flying upside down, stuffing his face with cake, presumably after having wandered into the dream through the lax border security.

If only he could remember how to wake up. He racked his brains again but he couldn't think. He tried to manipulate the dream enough that a book appeared on the shelf with the information locked inside his unconscious written on its pages. As soon as he tried, something deep within his psyche moved his thoughts to somewhere else, leaving him with a book full of jumbled nonsense and a creeping sense of dread at some kind of terrible fate that would befall him if he woke up. It sucked when a lesson he had taught himself to the point that it became reflexive wouldn't stop kicking in when he no longer needed it, when it became a liability rather than a lifesaving instinct. 

At least he still had the girl to talk to. What was her name again? Claris. She seemed nice. He vaguely remembered sometimes seeing her around his neighbourhood, that maybe she lived near him somewhere. She had always been humming a tune. It was night again - he couldn't remember when it had started to grow dark. In any case, that meant her concert would start soon. It was magnificent when she was in her dress, like watching a choir of angels. One advantage of not being able to wake up from a dream version of your waking life was that the special effects at the concerts were always awesome. The physics was a little weird but his basketball skills were improving a lot. 

Best of all, she was like him. In fact, they had been working together without realising it, both of them dualising with NiGHTs, sometimes even at the same time. NiGHTs could split into more than one body, but were they really different people, or were all three of them sharing one soul at that point? The thought made him blush - he barely knew this girl! That said, the conversations felt like they had known each other all their lives, even though they only really talked about how close they had gotten to waking up, what their plans were once they woke up, what their next move would be in the quest to wake up and, most importantly, where and how they would meet up in the waking world.

"What if we forget each other?" asked Claris.  
  
"I remember my dreams a lot more than most people," said Elliot, "Especially the important ones."  
  
"We still won't be able to see each other as much. We've got school and then I have rehearsal and you've got your basketball training, and... what I'm saying is, maybe we should be taking advantage of this situation a little more while we still have what people aren't supposed to?"  
  
"But we don't know what's happening to us, especially our bodies. It might be hurting us."  
  
Claris frowned, her eyes suddenly a little far away, her voice shaking, "That might be an even better reason not to go back until we have to."  
  
Elliot didn't like seeing Claris in so much pain. He regretted saying anything. He racked his brain for something that would bring back the smile he looked forward to seeing so much, "It'll be okay because NiGHTs is watching over us. NiGHTs wouldn't let us come to any harm."  
  
"NiGHTs let this happen to us, didn't they?"  
  
Elliot glanced up at a giant crescent moon that hung in a clear, starry sky, its colours spreading into subtle dark blues and purples, the stars shimmering and winking. The sky was never normally this perfect in the city. Inside the moon's curve, NiGHTs lounged, playing a hauntingly beautiful melody on their flute. Watching over us, Elliot told himself.  
  
"I think they can't help it, that it was always going to happen. If anything, it's our own fault," he told her, "Or maybe it happened for a good reason, and NiGHTs is making sure we go back at the right time."  
  
"Yeah, I'm sure you're right," Claris sighed, "But still, I feel like I should keep trying to wake up on my own if I possibly can. Shall we go to the park and try it together?"

Elliot smiled and nodded. Hand in hand, they strolled over to the fountain in the middle of Splash Garden plaza.


End file.
